This is a follow up to my colleague Nick’s post here where he explored the idea of the four-day working week, it’s benefits, and challenges to implementing it. Nick identifies wellbeing, productivity and fairness as the main elements involved.

Feeling inspired and with several factors combining I decided to run a one-person trial over the summer of 2020 and report back my experiences. To do so I spread days of annual leave throughout the summer school holidays, giving me longer weekends, rather than taking a full week break.

Why bother?

Simply, working less over the summer holiday suited my family and me. With school age children and my wife being a teacher, it is the best time for us to be together as a family at leisure. This year, with working from home during the COVID19 pandemic, it was more relevant than ever, as I would not be physically remote from all the fun and games as I usually would in the office. There would be inconvenience as ¾ of the people in my home would be forced into maintaining a timetable that was not based on their needs, and jealousy from me of their free time, whilst I toiled at the keyboard. Working four days a week over the summer holidays presented solutions to these. Four days of work would give me three days to spend being present and active in my children’s lives.

And I’m happy to say that it did.

So, what did I find out from my own experiment, what about those key elements Nick mentioned?

WeIlbeing:

I certainly felt benefits to my wellbeing and observed them with my family. We explored more of our local area and our hobbies together than we usually would. There was no feeling of cramming everything into a week’s leave and ideas could expand and change over the six weeks in a very organic way.

When it comes to work/life balance the desire is nearly always to stack more onto the side of life than work. Any increase in the life side is seen as a positive, so this is unsurprising so how did it affect my sense of life satisfaction.

Productivity:

I didn’t suddenly become more productive by cutting my hours in work and having more time to recharge. Losing 20 per cent of my office hours did have the effect of reducing what I could possibly do but neither was the drop as dramatic as it could have been. I knew it was coming and was able to prepare and plan in advance for the change and prioritised tasks to a much greater degree. With the knowledge that there was not long until family time I remained more focused throughout the remaining working hours without feeling guilty I was missing out on the best years of life.

There was a cost, and it came in terms of flexibility. When agility in work was required it was an issue. There was less time for unplanned instances and where the extended weekends were a chance to unwind more fully, I did feel under more stress during the week. The extremes of feeling were amplified rather than reduced. I’m not alone in finding this as examples in Sweden of shorter working hours have shown the importance of the boundary between work and non-work time.

Fairness:

A large part of this was being the lone four-day worker. My colleagues remained working the usual 5/2 split as did clients outside of Miller Research. Being less present to answer emails (my work emails are not connected to my phone and long may that continue) and other messages made for more packed Monday mornings and shorter deadlines for the rest of team working on projects with me. Without a wider culture change and a corresponding shift in week expectations it is likely this is unavoidable. We are used to working the same times as everyone else (in office land. 9/10 people in Britain as a whole no longer work the traditional 9-5) and delays in communication feel like the return to an earlier era. As Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (author of the books Shorter; Rest; and The Distraction Addiction) has said “better collective routines, not individual practices, make shorter hours feasible”.

The Future:

So do I wish to continue? No. To do so successfully would mean stepping back from my projects, unfair on the rest of the team, and earning less is unfair on my family’s financial wellbeing. As well as this, some of the driving need from early in the summer has vanished. My wife and children are back in work and school Monday to Friday once more. The 5/2 routine is suiting the current situation in a way it did not throughout August. Working from home continues so I am present to do the school run and be an active part my kids’ day like I was during the summer.

Would I turn down 4 day working in the future? Again no. As I said earlier, increasing the life side of the work/life balance is always appreciated. I am in a very fortunate position. As the experience of lockdown has shown, the effects on different people vary due to several reasons. For those who saw benefits in greater time with loved ones whilst working from home, the Office for National Statistics has found that 86 per cent would like it to continue.

My experiences cannot be used to build a generalised view for or against a four-day week, but they certainly highlighted many of the considerations for me. There is no real difference between lived life and work life. Work is an important part of my life that needs to fit into the whole picture.